Monday, 17 October 2011

In due course you will all be getting exposed to my reviews of this years Hotel Chocolat 2011 Halloween and Christmas ranges, but before I give you them I feel the need to cover off a reader request I received a month or so ago from devoted JCM Matt. According to Matt's e-mail he first came across this slab a while back on a trip to one of Hotel Chocolat's own brand stores (the one in Birmingham), where he was given a sample and enjoyed it so much he subsequently bought the whole slab. Following his positive experience Matt insisted a Chocolate Mission review be conducted. A few e-mails later between Matt, myself and my pals at Hotel Chocolat and this quickly became a reality.

This Munch It - Crunch It slab came in a 200.0g format and has not long been in the Hotel Chocolate range. In terms of size I preferred this style of slab to the 100.0g chunkier ones as it meant it was far easier to break apart - this was something my Mother went on about no end! Looks wise it wasn't the prettiest slab I had ever had grace my gaze from the Hotel Chocolat crew, but hey, it looked nice enough and I liked the fact that the mini cookie pieces didn't fall off like so many other chocolates where they weren't as deep set.

Described as 'caramel flavoured milk chocolate decorated with cocoa biscuits and white chocolate' this sounded like like a very straight forward proposition and one none to dissimilar to several other Hotel Chocolat slabs I had reviewed previously - See HERE. Being a seasoned veteran of Hotel Chocolat caramel chocolate I was surprised by the depth of flavour greeting me when I got stuck in to this slab. Previous experiences had seen me describe the chocolate as having 'creamy burnt sugar notes' and that it delivered a 'cream based butterscotch taste'. With this slab, whilst these flavours were still pretty much there, I felt like they got diluted just a little bit by the sweetness coming the white chocolate. The cocoa biscuit pieces provided a nice crunchy element to the smooth melting chocolate, but as ever with these mini cookie bits I didn't feel like they would have been missed had they not been there. Aside from the looks, one positive element that I can say about the white chocolate was that it at least bought an element of vanilla to the taste.

Overall this was a slab that was liked by everyone I tried it with etc, but as you see from the scoring chart it didn't quite match up to some of the finer tasting chocolates I had reviewed previously. Hotel Chocolat's caramel chocolate is one of my favourite recipes of theirs, so to taste it and feel like it was being a little hampered by the other elements included on the slab was a touch disappointing. Reading this all back I hope no one takes out a negative sentiment towards this chocolate. It was still a cut above 90.0% of chocolates I try on a regular basis - just in the context of Hotel Chocolat there are a few I would recommend instead. To see which ones I suggest you head to the archives HERE and feast your eyes.